Law, Legal Systems, and Types of Legal Rules

Keyword(s):  
2019 ◽  
pp. 89-126
Author(s):  
Alf Ross

This chapter identifies the ideology of the sources of law in the sense of determining the general sources through which judges form their beliefs about the validity of individual legal rules. In accordance with the norm-descriptive perspective, the focus is on identifying the ideology of the sources of law that is actually held by judges. As part of scientifically valid law, the ideology of the sources of law varies from one legal system to another. The task for general legal theory can therefore only consist in stating and characterizing certain general types of sources of law, which experience tells us are found in all well-developed legal systems where they are found to determine how courts proceed in their search for the norms on which they base their decision. This chapter identifies four such sources of law and considers the degree of objectification or positivization possessed by each of these types of sources. Specifically, it discusses the completely objectivized type of source: authoritative formulations (legislation in its widest sense); and the partially objectivized types of source: precedent and custom; and the non-objectivized, ‘free’ type of source: ‘cultural tradition’ or ‘the nature of the matter’. Countenancing the latter as a scientifically valid source of law, is further argued to highlight the difference between the author’s legal realist perspective and the formalist perspective characteristic of legal positivism.


2019 ◽  
Vol 67 (4) ◽  
pp. 861-888
Author(s):  
Mathias Siems

Abstract What can comparative law compare? It is relatively uncontroversial that certain topics are included in its scope. For example, there is little doubt that any comparison between legal rules of different countries belongs to the field of comparative law. Beyond this traditional scope, some comparatists include further topics, for example, suggesting that legal systems of the past, subnational laws, and informal forms of dispute resolution can also be possible units of comparative law. But why stop here? As many legal topics involve elements of comparison, it may only be logical to make any comparison in law part of the field of comparative law. However, such a suggestion about the broadening of comparative law also needs to assess whether the methods and concepts of comparative law can be made suitable for non-conventional units. Therefore, this Article will discuss both the possible extensions to the scope of comparative law and the corresponding power of comparative law to deal with these new units of comparison.


2009 ◽  
Vol 1 (2) ◽  
pp. 138-162 ◽  
Author(s):  
Aron Balas ◽  
Rafael La Porta ◽  
Florencio Lopez-de-Silanes ◽  
Andrei Shleifer

Simeon Djankov et al. (2003) introduce a measure of the quality of contract enforcement—the formalism of civil procedure—for 109 countries as of 2000. For 40 of these countries, we compute procedural formalism every year since 1950. We find that large differences in procedural formalism between common and civil law countries existed in 1950 and widened by 2000. For this area of law, the findings are inconsistent with the hypothesis that national legal systems are converging, and support the view that legal origins exert long lasting influence on legal rules. (JEL K41, O17)


Prawo ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 332 ◽  
pp. 11-23
Author(s):  
Wojciech Rudnik

The notion of punishable attempt in doctrine and statutory law of Italian cities (13th–14th century) The purpose of the article is organising the past knowledge about criminal liability of the intent to commit a criminal offence. The legal construction of first offences formed in the statutes passed by Italian cities from the thirteenth to the fourteenth century. The possibility of an unfettered enactment of these legal acts was related to the autonomy of peculiar state structures — urban communes. In statutory law the elements of Roman and Lombard law articulated one another. However, these previous legal systems did not yet know the liability for attempting to commit crime as a general rule. A major influence on the activity of urban legislators was exerted by the notions framed by contemporary jurists, concerning themselves with the theoretical grounds for the institution of attempted crime. The author gives instances of legal rules, originating from the statutes of various communes, which proclaim that the intent to commit an unlawful act was punishable, despite the act itself not being committed. Der Begriff eines strafbaren Versuchs in der Doktrin und in der Gesetzgebung der italienischen Städte (13.–14. Jahrhundert) Ziel des Beitrags ist, das bisherige Wissen über die strafrechtliche Verantwortlichkeit des Vorsatzes zur Begehung einer Straftat zu organisieren. Die Konstruktion des Versuchs ein Verbrechen zu begehen, erschien zum ersten Mal in den im 13. und 14. Jahrhundert durch die italienischen Städte erlassenen Statuten. Die Möglichkeit einer ungehinderten Entstehung dieser Rechtsakte war auf die Autonomie der eigenartigen institutionellen Form — der Stadtkommunen zurückzuführen. In der Satzungsgesetzgebung verbanden sich Elemente des römischen und des langobardischen Rechts miteinander. Diese früheren Rechtssysteme kannten jedoch grundsätzlich die Verantwortlichkeit für verbrecherischen Vorsatz noch nicht. Großen Einfluss auf die Tätigkeit der städtischen Gesetzgeber übten die Ansichten der damaligen Juristen aus, die sich mit der theoretischen Begründung der Institution des Versuchs befassten. Der Autor stellt Beispiele der Vorschriften dar, die den Statuten verschiedener Kommunen zu entnehmen sind und die von der Strafbarkeit eines Versuchs, eine Straftat zu begehen, ohne dass diese vollendet wurde, zeugen.


Author(s):  
Brian H. Bix

A persistent question in modern legal philosophy is whether or how (human-created) legal rules and legal systems can produce moral obligations for citizens. Contemporary theorists have sought answers to this problem in the ideas of conventions, coordination problems, and plans. Some theorists argue that the law—that all legal rules—create general and at-least-presumptive moral obligations; others argue that the law, at best, occasionally triggers pre-existing moral obligations—some legal rules creating moral obligations for some people. This chapter explores the issue of how and when law creates moral obligations, and also considers a more recent approach to the nature of law which has raised doubts regarding whether the law is in fact artifactual in the way most theorists (and most citizens) believe.


2021 ◽  
pp. 69-82
Author(s):  
Frederick Schauer

This chapter starts out with Bentham’s antinomian thesis that rejected the very idea of setting up rules for selecting and evaluating evidence. Bentham believed that factfinding should be governed by epistemically good reasons as a process unconstrained by artificial legal rules. The author observes that most legal systems took up this approach by softening the hard edges of rules (as in common law jurisdictions) and by following the basically free-proof model of factfinding (as in countries that adopted the continental European approach). Yet, he claims that the law of evidence still remains substantially an affair of rules. Why this is the case and whether it should be the case, is the subject of this chapter.


2021 ◽  
pp. 19-38
Author(s):  
Omri Ben-Shahar ◽  
Ariel Porat

This chapter introduces the paradigm of personalized law as a distinctive jurisprudential method. It is a particular version of contextual law characterized by individualization: legal commands depend not only on external circumstances, but also on interpersonal differences between people. To identify with precision the relevant differences, and to use these features in a properly weighed manner, personalized law relies on machine-sorted information. For example, algorithms would be trained to identify personal attributes correlated with riskiness, so as to tailor personalized standards of care. The chapter identifies embryonic versions of personalized rules in existing and in old legal systems, to demonstrate that even when legal rules are formally uniform, personalized commands sometimes emerge in their shadow. It also shows the prevalence of private personalized regulation, whereby non-governmental entities develop personalized norms to regulate commercial, religious, and household domains.


Author(s):  
María Laura Manrique

Resumen: En este trabajo ofreceré un breve análisis filosófico de algunos aspectos centrales de las emociones, las excusas y su impacto en responsabilidad penal. En primer lugar, reconstruiré brevemente la discusión filosófica acerca de las emociones. En segundo lugar, expondré algunas de las normas que los códigos penales recogen sobre este tema. Por último, el objetivo central de este trabajo es mostrar que los diferentes fundamentos que se han esgrimido para justificar las excusas penales se reflejan, a su vez, en diferentes maneras de entender las emociones. Por ello, sostendré que no hay un desacuerdo genuino entre las diferentes familias de teorías  que pretenden justificar las excusas y que ambas por si solas son insuficientes para dar cuenta de las excusas emocionales tal como las entendemos en nuestros sistemas jurídicos.Palabras clave: Responsabilidad penal, excusas emocionales.Abstract: In this paper I offer a philosophical analysis of some basic aspects of emotions, excuses and criminal responsibility. Firstly, I briefly discuss about emotions. Secondly, I outline some of the legal rules that our penal codes contain about emotions. Finally, the main issue of this paper is to show that the different grounds that have been used to justify criminal excuses are reflected, in turn, in the various ways of understanding emotions. For that reason, I argue that there is no genuine disagreement between the different families of theories that seek to justify excuses. In addition, these theories are insufficient to explain emotional excuses as we understand them in our legal systems.  Keywords: Criminal responsibility, emotional excuses.


Author(s):  
Fulvio Cortese

At the end of the nineteenth century, Italian courts constructed government liability in narrow terms, excluding it whenever government took acts of imperium. Article 28 of the Constitution deviates from that line of cases, because it lays down two principles: first, that the officials and employees of public bodies are directly liable for acts committed in violation of rights and, second, that in such cases civil liability extends to public bodies. Concretely, the standard governing the non-contractual liability of public bodies is influenced by the rules of the Civil Code. Liability can thus be based on the existence of a breach of existing legal rules, including procedural constraints on the exercise of administrative powers. For example, the unlawful issuing of a building permit gives rise to liability. However, when public authorities exercise real discretion, issues of liability will be treated differently. And, unlike other legal systems, such issues often fall within the competence of administrative courts.


2019 ◽  
pp. 127-185
Author(s):  
Alf Ross

This chapter focuses on legal method and aims to determine the principles of interpretation that are scientifically valid. In accordance with previous chapters, this implies that the perspective is norm-descriptive, not norm-expressive. The aim is not to establish which principles of interpretation are correct but which principles judges hold to be correct and which, as such, actually guide the courts when they apply general legal rules to specific subject matters. As with the sources of law, the ideology of interpretation varies from one legal system to another. Accordingly, the task for general legal theory can only be to explain certain factual presuppositions concerning problems of method, and to place and characterize various existing styles of method and interpretation within the framework of a general typology. Furthermore, the chapter focuses primarily on problems of method in relation to statutory interpretation which features more prominently within Continental legal systems where legislation is the predominant source of law. On the basis of a general account of semantics, the chapter proceeds by analysing three types of problems of interpretation—syntactic, logical, and semantic—and concludes by reflecting on the role of pragmatic factors in the exercise of legal authority.


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